When a teenage trafficking victim agrees to testify against her traffickers in criminal court,

she goes missing before the case makes it to trial.

The disappearance and probable murder of a vulnerable child shed light on the harsh realities of hidden in plain sight sex trafficking in this episode of Last Seen Alive.

Thanks for listening to Last Seen Alive. I'm your host, Leah, crime analyst by day and true crime storyteller by night.

And I'm back to being your co-host, Scott.

Scott, April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month in the U.S., which I think is an appropriate time to tell today's story and shine a spotlight on the realities of a

particularly egregious form of child abuse, child sex trafficking.

You can't overstate how important that visibility is.

Definitely not. Sex trafficking is a hot topic in the realms of law enforcement and true

crime alike, but it's often misrepresented

and misunderstood, especially by the media. Popular media would often have us believe that

sex trafficking begins with an element of explosive surprise, a kidnapping, often of a woman or child,

and then an existence of exploitation hidden deep in shadows and secrecy away from ordinary society.

But often, that's not the case. In the U.S., traffickers typically employ much more insidious methods

of ensnaring their victims. Chances are, many of us have encountered victims of sex trafficking

without even realizing it, because usually it hides in plain sight.

Today, we're going to dive into the story of a vulnerable child who was targeted, trafficked,

and very possibly murdered when she summoned the courage to testify against her traffickers.

Her story is tragic and her traffickers' actions unthinkable to most of us.

But her experience is, in many ways, typical ofthinkable to most of us, but her experience is,

in many ways, typical of what the average U.S. trafficking victim endures.

This story is what American sex trafficking looks like, and the more of us that know that,

...